Today In News: June 29, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of TheWeek

• A scaled-back version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban took effect Thursday evening. The new rules, the product of months of legal wrangling, aren’t so much an outright ban as a tightening of already-tough visa policies affecting citizens from six Muslim-majority countries. 

• Senate Republicans wrapped up their work week in Washington Thursday without a clear deal on how to move forward on their stalled Obamacare repeal legislation.

• Senate Republican leaders considered keeping one of former President Barack Obama’s big tax increases on wealthier Americans and using the money to fatten proposed subsidies for the poor in a bid to placate moderate GOP lawmakers and salvage their struggling health care bill.

• Trump’s tweets aimed at MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski revived concerns about his views of women, drawing bipartisan howls of outrage and leaving fellow Republicans beseeching him: Stop, please just stop. In a city where civility already is in short supply and Trump is struggling for any support he can get for his proposals on health care, immigration and other controversial issues. 

• The White House offered an unapologetic defense Thursday of President Trump’s tweets attacking MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski during a contentious televised press briefing. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders was grilled over whether Trump’s inflammatory tweet was beneath the dignity of the presidency, fueled a hostile political environment and set a bad example of how women should be treated by powerful men.

• The number of medical referrals from Gaza that the PA passes on to Israel has dropped, leaving patients needing urgent care. For the two million Palestinians in the impoverished Strip, a difficult-to-obtain Israeli exit permit is required for them to leave and be treated in Israel or the occupied territories of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

• The state of Hawaii on Thursday filed a court challenge to the Trump administration's limitations on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations.

• China has built new military facilities on islands in the South China Sea, a move that could raise tensions with Washington, which has accused Beijing of militarizing the vital waterway. New satellite images show missile shelters and radar and communications facilities being built on the Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi Reefs in the Spratly Islands.

• U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week at a summit in Germany that brings two world leaders whose political fortunes have become intertwined face-to-face for the first time.

• With anti-Islamic State group forces on the offensive in both the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, Iraq’s prime minister on Thursday declared an end to the extremist group’s self-proclaimed caliphate.

• One immigration bill would strip federal dollars from self-proclaimed “sanctuary” cities that shield residents from federal immigration authorities, while a separate measure would stiffen punishments for people who re-enter the U.S. illegally. Warning of threats to public safety and national security, the Republican-led House on approved two bills to crack down on illegal immigration, a key priority for President Donald Trump.

• A man has been arrested after he tried to drive a car into a crowd in front of a mosque in the Paris suburb of Creteil.

• The United States plans to sell Taiwan $1.42bn in arms, the first such sale under the administration of President Donald Trump and a move sure to anger China, whose help the president has been seeking to rein in North Korea.

Obamacare VS. Trumpcare--Facts Explained

Did You Know?

• Maternal care in the USA is worse than Libya, Turkey, and Iran.

• The US spends 2x more on healthcare than any other developed nation in the world--
• Costs will go up even more under the AHCA (Trumpcare).

• Republican politicians have campaigned on repealing President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms since they were enacted in 2010.

• The current version of Trumpcare in the Senate allows the largest tax cuts to the wealthy in human history while cutting insurance to about 22 million people by 2026.

Courtesy of Peter G. Peterson Foundation

Obamacare VS Trumpcare:

Individual Costs:

• Obamacare (ACA): All Americans are required to have health insurance or pay a tax penalty.
• Trumpcare (AHCA): The mandate is repealed under the Senate plan.

Employer Costs:

• Obamacare: Companies with more than 50 employees are required to offer health insurance or pay a penalty.

• Trumpcare: Employers do not have to offer healthcare to their employees.
• Affects more women than men in most cases --(i.e: Birth control, Maternal Care, Abortions, Child birth, etc.)

Taxes:

• Obamacare: Raised Medicare taxes on the wealthy--a household income of more than $250,000.
• Imposed new taxes on:
• Medical devices
• Health insurers
• Drug companies
• Investment income
• Tanning salons
• High-end health insurance plans

• Trumpcare: Repeals most Obamacare taxes and delays implementation of the tax on high-end health insurance plans to 2026.
• Gives the largest tax cut to wealthiest members of society, while adversely affecting low-income members of society.
• Example: Warren Buffet (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway) will claim $700,000 in tax cuts.  
• Low-income members will have to eventually pay half their income on just healthcare.

Insurance For Dependents Under 26:

• Obamacare: Requires insurers to allow children under age 26 to be covered by their parents’ policies.
• Trumpcare: Maintains this requirement.

Essential Health Benefits:

• Obamacare: Requires all insurance plans to cover certain health conditions and services:
• Emergency room visits
• Cancer treatment
• Annual physical exams
• Prescription drug costs
• Mental health counseling

• Trumpcare: Allows states to define what benefits are mandated, or opt out of the requirement entirely.

Pre-Existing Condition Coverage:

• Obamacare: Prohibits insurers from denying coverage or charging more to individuals who have pre-existing medical conditions (Asthma, Heart conditions, Depression, Anxiety [Mental Health] etc).

• Trumpcare: States can let insurers charge as much as they like to sick people--
• Allocates only $8bn to help subsidize those patients.

Medicaid:

• Obamacare: Expanded Medicaid health insurance for the poor to cover more low-income individuals.

• Trumpcare: Phases out Medicaid expansion to reduce federal funding on the program starting 2020. 
• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has yet to score how much the government would save.
• the House bill saved more than $800bn in 10 years
• Senate bill makes even sharper cuts.

Women's Healthcare:

• Obamacare: Insurance companies prohibited from charging women more than men for the same health plan
• They also must provide core services including maternity care and contraceptives.

• Trumpcare: Insurance companies still banned from charging women more
•  BUT, states could allow insurers to drop maternity care and contraceptives from basic benefits.
• Also bans women from using federal tax credits to buy a plan that covers abortion.

Older Americans:

• Obamacare: Insurers can charge older Americans no more than 3x the cost for younger Americans.

• Trumpcare: Insurers can charge older Americans 5x as much as younger Americans.  
• States can also set their own ratio.

Subsidies:

• Obamacare: Provided refundable tax credits for low-income individuals who purchased their insurance on government-run marketplaces
• Also helped support some out-of-pocket medical expenses.

• Trumpcare: Alters formula for tax credits, which will expand the benefit to more middle-class Americans
• Will raise the costs for some elderly and low-income individuals.

Courtesy of BBC News

Today In News: June 28, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of Reuters

• US President Donald Trump is holding a fundraising event at his hotel in Washington, to raise cash for his 2020 re-election campaign.

• A Republican senator who supports the Senate GOP's healthcare bill reportedly does not think President Trump has a clear understanding of the plan. Trump "seemed especially confused" after a moderate Republican said those who were against the bill would say it appeared to be a "massive tax break for the wealthy,” according to the Times report.

• President Trump on Wednesday blasted the press for saying he is "not totally engaged" on healthcare. "Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare," Trump tweeted.

• Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said that House and Senate lawmakers should receive a $2,500 per month housing allowance — something he explained would help ease housing costs for members who "can’t afford" two mortgages or rents. Congressmen make a whopping $174,000 salary. “I really do believe Congress would be much better served if there was a housing allowance for members of Congress,” Chaffetz told The Hill. Jason Chaffetz is the same Congressman who infamously claimed that people who could not afford healthcare “shouldn’t have bought that second iPhone”.

• Australian police said they have charged the Vatican's treasurer, Australian Cardinal George Pell, with multiple sexual assault offenses.

• Guards fired warning shots and then opened fire at the vehicle when the driver rammed his car through the gates of Brazil's presidential residence. The driver was detained and appeared to be a minor.

• The Trump administration has set new criteria for visa applicants from 6 mainly Muslim nations and all refugees that require a “close” family or business tie to the United States.   The move comes after the Supreme Court partially restored President Donald Trump’s executive order that was widely criticized as a ban on Muslims.

• A police pilot accused by Venezuela’s president of conducting a helicopter attack on the country’s Supreme Court on Tuesday demanded Nicolas Maduro’s resignation and general elections.  Authorities conducted a nationwide manhunt for Oscar Perez a day after the government charged that he stole the police chopper and directed grenades and gunfire against the Supreme Court and Interior Ministry in what Maduro called a “terrorist attack.”

• The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Thursday "revelation showed” former South Korean President, Park Gun-hye, had masterminded a plot to execute its "supreme leadership" - North Korean leader Kim Jong-un - in 2015 and it was imposing the "death penalty on traitor Park Geun-hye" and her spy chief Lee Byung-ho.

• Italy has threatened to stop vessels of other countries from bringing migrants to its ports.  The warning came as Italy's EU representative, Maurizio Massari, warned in a letter to the bloc the situation had become "unsustainable”.

• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went after the head of presidential personnel office, Johnny DeStefano, for dismissing his appointments to senior State Department positions and questioning his judgment.

• House Democrats are acknowledging there’s virtually no chance Nancy Pelosi is going anywhere before the 2018 congressional elections — more than 16 months away — despite a sense of unrest and scattered calls for Pelosi’s resignation as Democratic leader.

• President Donald Trump’s outside legal team is acknowledging that it pressed pause on stated plans to file a complaint against former FBI director James Comey for allegedly sharing the content of “privileged conversations” with the press.

Today In News: June 27, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of Reuters

• A U.S. warning to Syria's leadership against staging a chemical weapons attack was based on intelligence about what appeared to be active preparations at a Syrian airfield used for such an attack in April.

• Company and government officials reported serious intrusions at the Ukrainian power grid, banks and government offices. Ukraine's government said the cyberattack was the biggest ever to hit the country. The Minister of Internal Affairs was quick to suggest the attacks appeared to have originated from Russia.

• U.S. Senate Republican leaders postponed a vote on a healthcare overhaul on Tuesday after resistance from members of their own party, and President Donald Trump summoned Republican senators to the White House to urge them to break the stalemate.

• Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro warned on that he and supporters would take up arms if his socialist government was violently overthrown by opponents who have been on the streets protesting for three months.

• 3 Chicago police officers were indicted Tuesday on felony charges that they conspired to cover up the actions of a white police officer who shot and killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, saying the officers lied when they alleged the black teenager “aggressively” swung a knife at officers and attempted to get up from the ground still armed after he was shot. Officer Jason Van Dyke shot the teenager 16 times.

• Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Tuesday formally acknowledged his lobbying work for a group tied to Ukraine’s Party of Regions.

• Time magazine has asked the Trump Organization to remove copies of a fake cover of President Trump that were on display at the company’s golf clubs. The request came after the newspaper reported that at least four Trump-branded golf clubs had displayed a fake Time magazine cover that depicted Trump with the headline “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” 

• A White House reporter confronted White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the top of her Tuesday press briefing, accusing her of "inflaming" tensions with the media and undercutting the credibility of reporters.

• A House panel approved a controversial proposal to separate air traffic control from the federal government. The bill, which would reauthorize the FAA for six years, would dramatically shift the country’s air navigation system over three years to a private corporation, which would be governed by a board of directors and have the power to impose user fees. 

• Judge Aaron Persky, who faced a nationwide backlash for his sentencing of campus rapist, is facing a formal attempt to remove him from the bench.  Persky stunned the world when he sentenced Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster at a fraternity party.

• A federal court in Michigan has blocked the deportation of more than 1,400 Iraqis living in the US who have been targeted in recent immigration raids.

• Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses. Telemarketers for the nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (Case), were instructed in contracts signed by Sekulow to urge people who pleaded poverty or said they were out of work to dig deep for a “sacrificial gift”.

• The World Bank has been accused of systematic forced labour and cases of child labour in an area where the Uzbek government is implementing a World Bank-funded irrigation project. They are also accused of funding agricultural projects in Uzbekistan that are also linked to state-sponsored child labour and forced labour in the cotton industry.

Today In News: June 26, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of BBC

• The U.S. has “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime” in Syria.
• The Senate Republican health care bill would leave 22 million more Americans uninsured in 2026 than under President Barack Obama’s health care law while giving the wealthy the biggest tax breaks in living memory, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.
• President Donald Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi heralded an increasingly close strategic partnership as the U.S. branded a top militant from neighboring Pakistan as a “global terrorist.”
• The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to forge ahead with a limited version of his ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries to the U.S. Trump hailed the decision as a “victory for national security,” but it’s likely to set off a new round of court disputes over anti-terror efforts and religious discrimination.
• Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ripped the GOP proposal to repeal and replace ObamaCare on Monday night. “I know this is a very sensitive issue, but I’m going to raise it, and that is that the horrible and unspeakable truth is that if this legislation were to pass … many thousands of our fellow Americans every single year will die, and many more will suffer and become much sicker than they should,” Sanders said from the Senate floor. Sanders added that it is, “barbaric and immoral.”
• The image of the United States has deteriorated sharply across the globe under President Donald Trump and an overwhelming majority of people in other countries have no confidence in his ability to lead, a survey from the Pew Research Center showed. Five months into Trump’s presidency, the survey spanning 37 nations showed U.S. favorability ratings in the rest of the world slumping to 49 percent from 64 percent at the end of Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House.
• The United States plans to place China on its global list of worst offenders in human trafficking and forced labor. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has decided to drop China to “Tier 3,” the lowest grade, putting it alongside Iran, North Korea and Syria.
• Brazil’s top federal prosecutor charged President Michel Temer with taking multimillion-dollar bribes in a stinging blow to the unpopular leader and to political stability in Latin America’s largest country.
• Glyphosate, an herbicide and the active ingredient in Monsanto Co’s popular Roundup weed killer, will be added to California’s list of chemicals known to cause cancer effective July 7. Monsanto vowed to continue its legal fight against the designation.
• Former pharmaceutical chief executive Martin Shkreli will begin his trial in New York next week and is charged with fraud.

Today In News: June 25, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of NPR

• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's pick to lead the department's $1.3 trillion student loan system is the CEO of a private student loan company.

• Senate Republicans launched their plan for dismantling Barack Obama’s health care law, edging a step closer to their dream of repeal with a bill that would drastically cut Medicaid and end tax increases on the wealthy. Making a final push, President Donald Trump said he doesn’t think congressional Republicans are “that far off” on a health overhaul to replace “the dead carcass of Obamacare.”   

• Alerted by an announcement over a mosque’s loudspeaker that an overturned tanker truck had sprung a leak, scores of villagers raced to the scene with fuel containers Sunday to gather the oil.   Then the wreck exploded, engulfing people in flames as they screamed in terror. At least 153 men, women and children were killed, with dozens more in critical condition

• Medicaid is the nation’s largest public insurance program, providing health benefits to nearly 74 million Americans including low-income adults and children, seniors and people with disabilities.   It has unparalleled reach: about half of all babies are born on Medicaid and 4 in 10 children are covered by Medicaid or its sister benefit, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.  Medicaid has also become a critical benefit for elderly Americans whose medical needs are not covered by Medicare, including 6 in 10 residents in nursing homes. If it passes into law, Trump will break a pledge he made as a candidate to protect Medicaid from spending cuts.

• Dozens of people are missing and 3 people dead after the four-deck vessel went down near the tourist town of Guatapé, Colombia. 

• An Oklahoma doctor was charged with five counts of second degree murder on Friday, after prosecutors say she prescribed a “horrifyingly excessive” amount of opioid painkillers to her patients,

• A number of government websites in the US state of Ohio, including that of Governor John Kasich, have been hacked to display a pro-IS message. It said President Donald Trump would be held accountable for "every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries" and ended "I love Islamic state”.

• Police in the Turkish city of Istanbul have thwarted attempts by organisers to hold a banned Gay Pride march by firing rubber bullets to disperse the marchers and detained a number of them.  The organizers of the annual event had vowed to press ahead despite the ban by the authorities, who had cited threats from far-right groups.

• All of the buildings, about 60 so far, for which external cladding samples were so far submitted failed combustibility tests.

• US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says some demands on Qatar by a group of Arab countries that have imposed a blockade against it "will be very difficult to meet”.

• Albania's ruling Socialist Party look set to win Sunday's parliamentary election with between 45 and 49 percent of votes, an exit poll by Italy's IPR Marketing showed, which could secure them a majority of the seats in parliament.

• Officials with the conservative U.S. political network overseen by the Koch brothers say they are unhappy with the healthcare bill for not being conservative enough which may be voted on by the Senate this week and will lobby for changes to it. “We have been disappointed that movement has not been more dramatic toward a full repeal,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a grassroots advocacy group backed by Charles Koch and his brother, David.

• Eric Trump has been largely critical of the DNC leader, Tom Perez, also calling him a "whack job" and a “nut job” claiming the Democratic Party doesn't have a clear message.

• Homeland Security officials testified this week before the Senate Intelligence Committee that they have evidence that Russia targeted election-related systems in 21 states as part of its wider effort to influence the presidential election. Growing concerns about threats to U.S. election systems have put the heat on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its efforts to boost national cybersecurity.

Authorized Use Of Military Force--How America Justifies It’s Deadly Drone Strikes and Unsuccessful Raids

War Powers Resolution:

• After the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Administrations spent nearly a decade committing U.S. troops to Southeast Asia without Congressional approval---
• In 1973: Congress passed the War Powers Resolution:
• The Resolution sought to halt the erosion of Congress’s ability to participate in war-making decisions.
• This also furthered by the Resolution’s requirement that the President communicate to Congress the commitment of troops within 48 hours. 
• Further, the statute requires the President to remove all troops after 60 days if Congress has not granted an extension.

Authorized Use Of Military Force (AUMF):

• Public Law  No.   107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001)--Authorized Use Of Military Force (AUMF) was enacted soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
• Congress gave the President unlimited warfare powers without needing to declare war.
• It let's the President order new military action without needing to ask Congress first.
• No expiration date on this mandate.

• The AUMF grants the President the authority to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determines “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks.
• Or even those whom he assumed harbored those persons or groups.

• The AUMF is so powerful, the last president (President Obama) actually asked Congress to reduce it’s powers and to eventually repeal the mandate.
• Congress rejected him.
• Eventually Obama expanded his AUMF powers when he began battling the terror group born out of Al-Qaeda >> ISIS.

Courtesy of Long Island Press

Who Are We Actively Bombing Today With AUMF Powers?

• Iraq
• Since 2001--AUMF Terrorists
• Also called the “Iraq Resolution” in 2002.
• Afghanistan
• Ethiopia 
• Somalia
• The Obama administration recently expanded AUMF to include members of the African Islamist militant group al-Shabab. 

• The Shabab grew up as an Islamist insurgency after 2007, when Ethiopia, with American support, invaded Somalia to overthrow an Islamist council that had briefly taken control of much of the long-chaotic country.
• Obama’s characterization of al-Shabab — as an “associated force” of Al Qaeda has been controversial, with many experts warning that it is a slippery slope to a forever war.

• Pakistan
• Syria
• “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized” President Barack Obama
• Obama argued that it was necessary to intervene because the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria "risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemicals weapons" and that it put U.S. regional allies that share a border with Syria in danger.
• Section One of the bill gives the bill its short title: Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Government of Syria to Respond to Use of Chemical Weapons.

• Libya
• Yemen
•  50 airstrikes in March 2017 alone.

• The American citizens, innocent family members, of Anwar Al-Awlaki’s family---his 16 year old son and 8 year old sister on two separate occasions.

(Above: Nawar Al-Awlaki killed in Feb 2017 by a raid of US forces)
(Below: Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki killed in 2012 by cluster bombs of the Obama Administration)

Today In News: June 24, 2017

Today In News:

President Donald Trump holds a rally with supporters in an arena in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
(Courtesy of Reuters)

• U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in two provinces in Syria killed 472 civilians in May, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The United Kingdom-based human rights monitor said the death toll was the highest since coalition-led raids began in the Fall of 2014.

• Senate Republicans are mulling over a provision to their healthcare overhaul measure that could bar Americans from purchasing insurance on the individual market for six months if they don't maintain continuous coverage. The provision would address concerns over the bill’s current lack of penalties for those who choose not to purchase insurance. 

• China and the United States agreed that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula should be "complete, verifiable and irreversible”.

• Egypt's parliament last week backed the deal handing control of Tiran and Sanafir islands to Saudi Arabia.  Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday ratified an agreement that cedes sovereignty over two uninhabited Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, brushing off widespread public criticism of the deal.

• Israel said it had targeted Syrian military installations after shells landed in the occupied Golan Heights but a Syrian military source said the Israeli strikes in Golan Heights killed some civilians. Israel has targeted Syria several times during the conflict, sometimes after projectiles have landed in the Golan Heights, but also to hit weapons supplies of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside the Syrian government.

• Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told MSNBC that President Trump's tweet threatening James Comey with possible "tapes" of their meeting was "absolutely" an attempt to intimidate the former FBI director.

• President Trump will reportedly receive a report about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process following a "tense" meeting between White House senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Abbas was reportedly furious at Kushner relaying the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “(Kushner) will submit his report to the president and, after it is submitted, Trump will decide if there's a chance for negotiations or it might be preferable to pull out peace talks,” an official said.

• The US State Department issued a stinging rebuke of the behaviour of the Saudis and their Egyptian, Emirati and Bahraini allies, with the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, warning them to make their demands on Qatar “reasonable and actionable”.

• Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation and the second most senior Iranian negotiator,  said  “lavish arms purchases” by regional actors – a reference to the Saudi purchase of $100bn of US arms during Donald Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh – would be seen as provocative in Tehran and that it would be unrealistic to expect Iran to remain “indifferent”.

• A US war court has charged an Indonesian detainee at Guantánamo Bay in connection with the 2002 bombing in Bali that marked Indonesia’s deadliest terror strike.  The detainee known as Hambali also was charged in connection with an attack on the JW Marriott in Jakarta in 2003.

• When the U.S. seized Russian compounds located in Maryland and New York last year, officials discovered destroyed information inside that would have been useful in the ongoing probe regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. The discovery raises the likelihood that Russians were conducting illegal intelligence operations on U.S. soil.

• Fears that cuts to Medicaid could exacerbate a national opioid epidemic that took more lives last year than the Vietnam War have emerged as a huge threat to the Senate GOP's ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill.

Today In News: June 23, 2017

Today In News:

Courtesy of Reuters

• Western technology companies, including Cisco, IBM and SAP, are bowing to demands by Moscow for access to closely guarded product security secrets.

• The UK Parliament has been hit by a “sustained and determined” cyber-attack by hackers attempting to gain access to MPs’ and their staffers’ email accounts.

• 4 Arab states that imposed a boycott on Qatar have issued an ultimatum to Doha to close Al Jazeera television, curb ties with Iran, shut a Turkish base and pay reparations, demands so far reaching it would appear to be hard for Doha to comply.

• Turkey has rejected a call from 4 Arab countries to shut down its military base in Qatar, saying the base was a guarantor of security in the Gulf and demands for its closure represented interference in its ties with Doha

• The Saudi ministry said that three cells had planned the attack on worshippers and security forces at the mosque as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan nears its climax. Saudi security forces on Friday foiled a suicide attack on the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, cornering the would-be attacker in an apartment, where he blew himself up.

• The explosion on Friday morning targeted a police checkpost near a complex that is housing the Balochistan police chief's office. At least 12 people have been killed and 14 wounded in a suicide car bomb attack near the provincial police chief’s office in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

• At least four people have been killed in a car bomb attack outside a police station in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.  This is the third attack to hit the capital in three days.  The bomb targeted the Waberi district police station on the busy Maka Almukarramah road. 

• Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that the "liberation" of the city of Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL [ISIS]) will be announced in a few days.

• Despite internal opposition from officials at the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which historically has had an influential voice on the matter, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is slated to remove Iraq and Myanmar from a U.S. list of the world's worst offenders on the use of child soldiers

• Venezuelan troops fired what appeared to be rubber bullets at protesters as they attacked the perimeter of an airbase, killing a demonstrator and bringing the death toll to at least 76 in unrest since April.

• Dean Heller (R-Nev.) announced that he is opposed to the Senate GOP's ObamaCare repeal bill in its current form, making him the fifth GOP senator to come out against the bill. Heller, the most vulnerable GOP senator up for reelection next year, raised doubt about whether he would support any phaseout of the federal funds for Medicaid expansion.

• The Republican-backed healthcare legislation includes significant cuts to Medicaid, repeals billions of tax dollars that were used to raise money for ObamaCare’s coverage expansion while rolling back the mandate to purchase coverage. “As families across the nation continue to suffer under this law, I only hope that Democrats in Congress will have the political courage to help fix what we know to be a catastrophic situation, a total disaster that they have created.” President Trump stated.

• WHCA President Jeff Mason said he met with White House press secretary Sean Spicer and his deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to convey the reporters’ concerns about the increasing number of off-camera briefings.

• CNN sent their Supreme Court sketch artist to the White House press briefing after the White House announced it would be banning cameras from the briefing.

• The Trump administration is eliminating funding for a U.S. nonprofit that combats white extremism. Homeland Security slashed a planned grant to the Chicago-based Life After Hate.

• Head of Turkey’s Education Ministry's curriculum board, said the evolution theory had been excluded from the most recent draft of the country's new national curriculum, announced earlier this year.